In 1946, the Institute for the Study of Analgesic and Sedative Drugs
awarded a grant to the Laboratory of Industrial Hygiene at New York City's Department
of Health to study problems associated with analgesic (pain-relieving) medications.
Axelrod and his mentor, Bernard Brodie, were charged with finding out why consumers
who used non-aspirin analgesics, such as Bromo Seltzer, were developing an illness known
as methemoglobinemia, a non-lethal blood condition. Brodie and Axelrod
demonstrated that acetanilide, the main ingredient of these products, was the
problem. They suggested that manufacturers replace it with acetaminophen, an
analgesic now better known under its brand name, Tylenol. "[It] was my
first taste of real research, and I loved it," Axelrod later wrote of his
first article, "The Fate of Acetanilide in Man," which was published in the
Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics in 1948.

Brodie and Axelrod continued to collaborate on a number of projects related
to the metabolism of analgesic drugs including phenacetin, antipyrine,
aminopyrine, and dicoumerol. Axelrod noted that dicoumerol appeared in the
blood plasma of test subjects in various concentrations, which suggested to him
that there were individual and, thus, genetic differences in how people and
animals metabolize drugs. This recognition of metabolic difference was a key
moment of understanding in Axelrod's early career.

In 1949, Axelrod moved to the National Heart Institute at the National
Institutes of Health and continued his research, directing experiments on the
effects of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) on drug metabolism. After working with
analgesics, Axelrod became increasingly interested in the "sympathomimetic
amines," a phrase coined in 1910 by the British pharmacologists George
Barger and Henry Hallett Dale. This group of drugs, which include caffeine,
amphetamine, mescaline, and ephedrine, mimics the chemical behavior
of hormones in the nervous system, including epinephrine, norepinephrine,
dopamine, and serotonin.

From January 1950 through March 1951, Axelrod studied the effects of
caffeine on behavior and developed new methods for measuring caffeine
metabolism in the blood. Viewers can read, in the Documents section, his
experiments with popular coffee brands taken from Axelrod's extensive
collection of original laboratory notebooks. Beginning in 1951, Axelrod
conducted research on codeine, ephedrine, methamphetamine, and morphine. In
1953 and 1954, he published comparative studies of the metabolism and
disposition of these drugs.

Axelrod was also among the first U.S. scientists to conduct scientific
experiments on the metabolism of lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (known
colloquially as LSD), which he studied in-depth from September 1954 through
March 1958. LSD, a hallucinogenic drug, sparked both scientific and legal
controversy after its synthesis had garnered significant media attention.
Despite the drug's notoriety, Axelrod's research on LSD in the 1950s did not
turn him into a figure in the emerging counterculture of the 1960s. He was not,
for example, associated with scientists like Timothy Leary, the psychologist
who was fired from Harvard University after he promoted LSD use through his
famous phrase "tune in, turn on, drop out."